Tomatoes and trees

First you buy tomato plants. Then you gain permission from the land lady to put in a garden for which to plant said plants. Then you weed a small plot until the rain gets too rainy. Then you go buy more plants because if 6 tomatoes are ok then 10 should be fine too and some peppers and beans and cucumbers and zucchini shouldn’t hurt either. After that you pull up all of the not-grass that is in the “backyard” because now you can fill it up. Then you find yourself unable to requisition a shovel but it is raining anyway so it doesn’t matter much.

But now you have a shovel and a tray of plants that need planting. So you begin turning the soil and find lots of rocks and even more glass. But for every shard of glass there is a nice healthy earthworm so it can’t be all bad. The ground is moist and dark, full of nutrients and animals to shuffle them around. And while you work you even out the strangely sloped earth until you are about halfway through. This is when you first meet the tree. The tree quickly loses a few roots and you move on without much thought. But there it is again and again. And now the roots are growing around and through each other and now they are growing into each other. The first one is perhaps 2 feet long, then 5, now 10. And now for every solid shovel of dirt to turn there is another shovel that hits roots and stops dead.

This tree was planted perhaps before the houses themselves or at least at the same time. It is large but not regal. It is a city tree with boils and galls for all its shady branches. It grows at the junction of 3 lots. Above ground it is forced this way by a garage wall, and that way by a fence, and growth is limited on another side by a driveway. Restrictions and rules in place to keep it growing ever taller and straighter if not healthier. But beneath the soil the tree was given no tending, no direction. Roots were free to do as they desired, first up now over, now through left and back right. A driveway may limit direct nutrients but not the persistent quest for them. And so a sprawling net of subterranean hardwood has crept from the parent trunk in all possible directions.

What could be removed from the small plot in the small time allowed with the small amount of energy left in the shoveler, was removed with gusto. Now the vestiges remain at the edges of the land waiting to be turned. Perhaps this is ground enough for my chosen green things to grow. The possibility of sharing will be considered after the application of a tape measure in the morning sunlight. If a compromise cannot now be made a new battle will unfold with a re-energized shoveler. But the outcome of the war is not in question.

The trees will always win. Unlike fickle flesh, trees can afford to be patient. I will be around tending and toiling on my small plot for a few years more at the most. The ground left behind will be more rich, even, and aerated for the effort. And so the root edges will reclaim territory in a slowly meandering way. The tree is surely older than I am, and may outlive me by a number of years. The tree has time to wait. Trees always have time.

Pancakes

2c trader joes multigrain baking mix
1c oatmeal
2T ground flax seed
2T oil
2 eggs
1.5c milk
cinnamon or nutmeg to taste

Serve with berries and real maple syrup.

Basically its the TJ's recipe plus oatmeal and flax seed and enough milk to make the consistency right again. But the bonus is that they are high in fiber and relatively good for you. I'm sure it works with other baking mix too or you could be less lazy and make them entirely from scratch. What intrigues me is that the TJ's box recipe is supposed to make between 12 and 14 cakes and I added a bunch of stuff and still only got 12. Shrug.

-Jn

4 seconds finished

Night comes slowly to this city
Washed with clean spring rain
Grey, Grey-blue the clouds dispersing
In sunset pink the foremost framed
And the buildings, mirrored, reflecting
Green and steel, green and grey
Save the few sun's light directing
Gold on gold to end the day

-Jn
I-93N
4/23/09

I hate bananas

We had nastier than usual bananas in the apartment this week so I decided to make bread with them. Keep in mind that the last time I made a banana inclusive recipe I gagged several times- pretty much whenever I could smell the bananas- so this was a big step. Also I had no pecans or walnuts, no coconut, no almond extract, no mixer, and a mostly white flour/refined sugar avoiding household. I knew mixing was going to be a problem so I made sure my wet and dry ingredients were homogenized before I put them together. That seemed to work well and I don't actually think a mixer would have made it any better (more to clean up and put away).

I was told that the bread came out perfectly and that I shouldn't change anything- no nuts, no coconut, no messing around with the flour or sugar ratios. I even had a few pieces and it was tasty which should tell you something.

(And as always 5L feel free to skip the DEATH ingredient.)

Jenn’s Perfect Banana Bread- adapted from Mom’s recipe

1 C White flour (I only use King Arthur Flour now for everything)
1 C White whole wheat flour
½ C White sugar
½ C Brown Sugar
1 teas. Baking soda
½ teas. Salt
1 T fresh grated orange peel (actually about 3 teas- more doesn’t hurt)
½ teas. Cinnamon (Didn’t actually measure this out)
¼ teas. Nutmeg (Didn’t actually measure this out)
½ C butter, softened (1 stick)
¼ C milk
1 C (4 small) mashed bananas
1 teas. Vanilla
½ teas. Amaretto (because we don’t have almond extract)

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all dry ingredients and mix evenly. Combine all wet ingredients and do the same. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix well. Turn into 9x5 bread pan which has been greased on bottom only. Bake at 350 for 60-70 mins- or when toothpick comes out clean.


Use this one if you are resistant to change...
Original Recipe (Mom’s)

1 C flour
1 C sugar
1 teas. Baking soda
½ teas. Salt
1 T grated orange peel
½ C butter, softened
¼ C milk
1 C (2 med) mashed bananas
1 teas. Vanilla
½ teas. almond extract
1 C flaked coconut
½ C chopped walnuts

Combine all ingredients except coconut and nuts. Blend at low speed- beat at med speed 3 mins. Stir in nuts and coconut. Turn into 9x5 bread pan which has been greased on bottom only. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 mins- or when toothpick comes out clean. I use 4 small pans and bake about 45 mins. Remove from pan immediately. Note: you can leave out the orange peel and coconut and even the nuts if you don’t have them.

Wrote this days ago...

The east coast is unique in North America because the geological composition is such that we can build underground. It is understood that this changes the structure of buildings. For instance, you rarely see basements in Florida. However, this also effects transportation. In Boston we have, as a result of the Big Dig, a maze of roads beneath parts of the city. So large, ugly highways have been hidden beneath historic buildings, and the city is more aesthetic.

In addition to burying our cars we are also permitted underground trains. Phoenix has a train system resting gently on the fragile desert soil and Chicago has trains attached to buildings several stories above the ground. They have the light rail and the El….we have the T.

For what it’s worth I have been taking the T more often lately and it puts me in the mind of dystopian societies. The system is well designed and trains should come often enough so that rowdy crowds do not build up on platforms but not so often that they are empty and thus wasteful. However, the trains themselves are aging and break down with almost daily regularity. Conveniently for the state, the delays seem confined to rush hour periods when people are still groggy from waking to early or tired from the day’s drudgery. The crowds are thus desperate and frustrated by a need to be anywhere else save where they stand, but the lack of energy drives them into suspicious and hopeless passiveness instead of riotous action. Youth maintain more energy throughout the events, but they resent cooperation and lack focus. They respond to the situation with furtive vandalism and little else. Still the effects of such street art are not always empty.

Posters highlighting or perhaps mocking the grey dystopianism are sprouting around the city. The image is a stern but portly face something like the synthesis of Che with Buddha. The eyes are watchful and the expression borders on angry, but it is rendered in a way that it cannot be taken seriously. Many posters contain only this face while others are underscored with the word OBEY in large, bold letters. Big Brother has come in the form of an overweight man and he is watching you from bridges and from rooftops. He is with you while you are on the highway, crossing a pedestrian bridge, or shuffling through the train station. He sensors the mail you slide into the mailbox and he peers in to the coffee shop where you access the internet to check your email.

I assume few acknowledge this bit of vandalism. At best they label it poor street art and dismiss it. And again I assume that these same people fail to notice the cameras in the tunnels reading license plates and those mounted on building corners near busy crosswalks. Signs denote train cars under surveillance and train stations watched as well, but these notices are lost amid one hundred other signs, posters, and graffiti scrawls. If the overzealous person does manage to read and understand those words they will be translated as “safety” anyway for watched means protected to most.

But perhaps this is all tainted thought. A bias brought on by reading too many of the wrong type of books in my youth. Had I read cheerful sentences my outlook might reflect the same. Instead I am left with sad images from sad pages that are brought into alignment with the current situation any time I step into the underground.

The underground, where the color is always washed in soot or concrete grey and pigeons huddle against the breeze that must be coming from someplace outside or above. The underground, where people wait idle and wary and water seems to always trickle down the walls from some other place into another unknown. The underground, where ugliness of all types is hidden.

Where's the cream filling?

The state of the Twinkies.
(One Twinkie a year for 10 years. However one of my Twinkies was stolen about 2 years ago so there should be 5 under that box.)

The Twinkie of the day above the sell by date that mysteriously lacks a year.

What I am theoretically still eating.

The guarantee that it will be good.
Twinkie number 6: Looks normal, feels like a cracker, crumbles like a cracker.
Like last year the cream filling has been absorbed into the cake. The outside is again crunchy but unlike last year the two ends are also pretty crunchy until you get about 2 bites in. The center right around where the filling would have been is still chewy and not as sacchariny. Actually it tastes a lot less like anything. Some residual nasty absorbed cream taste but everything else is pretty subtle.
Last bite. Crunchy.
And the clock resets.



Conclusion: Better than last year.

-Jn

See Also: Hostess Twinkies and Twinkie Recipes

Sort of like a snow day

I am still on school break. I get well over a month to sit on my duff and get bored. Went to my parents, went to the boyfriends parents, went to my place, went to the best friends, redecorated and refunitured a pair of apartments, hosted a playoffs batch, all interesting things with interesting people. I also did a lot of procrastinating writing a paper and a letter of recommendation. Writing with a quality assurance checker. No good. I have one more week minus the time I have not used productively today to get myself squared away. I am sort of flailing and splashing a lot with no structure to my days. It is hard to get up and hard to get moving and hard to start doing things I don’t want to do. There is a nebulous deadline floating out there over my head that I can see if I squint but like the deadline all of the steps to get there are fuzzy. Starting school again will be good for me.

Today I was hanging out at the boyfriend’s and he was busy being boring doing interview related things pretty much all day. The house was pretty much immaculate due to preparation for the aforementioned football bash and so I had to go outside to productively procrastinate. I carried snow and thought about nothing. Then I carried snow and thought about more nothing. Then the neighbor from the squirrel infested house came home, talked to me for a while, and took his smiley pooch for a drive. So I carried snow and thought about a little more than nothing. Then the neighbor came back and fired up his snow blower to help me. He did laps with the blower and I cleaned up in between his lanes in a comfortable steady manner enveloped by snow blower white noise which was much more like silence.

We were done to the point of having to ask other tenants to move vehicles so that we could get the last vestiges of snow when the land lord showed up to shovel. The landlord proceeded to wrestle the blower away from the neighbor and conscripted another tenant to shovel which was odd all around. We were almost done anyway so why bother? Plus with 4 people walking around carrying snow and talking to each other and to me it was difficult to keep carrying snow while thinking about nothing. I started thinking about carrying snow and how I didn’t want to carry snow because it was wet and heavy and I was cold and sweaty. Consequently, shortly after I started thinking about carrying snow I also started thinking about not carrying snow anymore which is also about when I stopped thinking about carrying snow because I stopped carrying snow and moved back inside. Problem solved. I do however need to do something Normal Rockwell-esq and make some sort of baked good for the neighbor with the smiley dog named Christy who chases the squirrels that live in the eaves of her peoples’ house.

I also never wrote up the recipe for my pumpkin soup. Hmmm…

-Jn

January was so long that it lasted into March

Have you ever wondered why we celebrate the new year in January. It hasn’t made sense to me when I was a child. I remember when I was young a made a comment to my mother about how it was strange that every year has two winters. She didn’t understand what I meant and corrected me but I wasn’t incorrect. Every calendar year is book ended by a winter either coming or going.

Why don’t we choose an equinox or a solstice, a changing of guard of the seasons. End at an established end and start with a true start instead of making up our own. I understand that these events are not set days but they stay close to each other and are bound by celestial movement not human designation. Other cultures and other times have used planting and harvesting seasons, or rainy and dry seasons, but nearly always season to demarcate the passage of time. We choose not to start at a season nor the mid-point of a season and this has been so for most places since before the Gregorian Calendar (the one you are most probably most used to) was introduced. But there is not a great deal of reason for why January 1st starts the year and not another first...or similarly why January 1 is in the middle of the front half of winter instead of some geometrically or celestially more logical place.

Apparently calendaring is not an easy business. It starts with the moon spinning round us out of sink with us spinning round the sun such that you cant always fit months with moons and not have seasons shift quickly. So there must be the extra days and the too few days chasing each other. And the craftsman must try to get all months to have a moon and to be odd numbered to pacify the gods and superstitions. Pagans and Christians and Republicans (roman) and Mathematicians all causing commotion if their holidays and symmetries are forced to shift. And the commonest man constantly confused by the push and pull of additional days or months by papal or pontifical decree such that his birthdays are never the same and letters come in the mail dated later then they were received.

While we are on the subject, why did we stick with the superstitious Roman choice of making February so short when the Catholics and other religious folk were clamoring for a proper calendar that didn’t lose days and shift important Holy Days around. We could have rounded out the months 31, 30, 31, 30 and stuck a leap day in any day we pleased. Why 31, 28(29), 31, 30 with a stuttered 31 later on. Perhaps at the mid year point. Why even give it a month. Make it a day outside the calendar. If at the new year point it would be a day between years. Name it after a king or celebrated figure.

This may seem strange for children born on that day but not really. Feb 29th babies are already forced into cruelties like being 1/4th their true age or celebrating their birthdays on off days. We other day babies have the same number of days in each of our years but face not the same issues because our dates don't drop of the map. Worse still for the Romans born in a month that was added or subtracted often at random to keep the seasons straight. How do they age. Better to have a true unbirthday, to be born outside of the calendar and never age at all.

awing

Once a way and a way to away round the world with no dirty sole
Twice a trip and a dip and a skip and a tightly spun swirl
Third for a wing and a sing and a bird alight to extol
Four for slight sound, whispers settling down
Fifth flies on to safe, solid bole
Six rests, soft breaths
And seven keeps sleep
Until comes again a once dawn

-Jn

And then it was over

I am finally starting to be back in control of the night time again. Last night I dreamed and it had the potential to be lucid except I declined conscious control. This was for the better.

It was a drawn out dream with many disjointed places and people but most of the people in my high school graduating class and others who left us along the way were there. And they were all this age but as if there had been no disconnect, no graduation and going separate ways and becoming married. Maybe we all had gone away but we still knew each other as if we were together daily.

We were in a bunker of sorts in the mountains outside of a city for a tour and dinner. Mid tour we met the president (who is actually one of the professors at UMB) and I spoke with him for a while. Then we had a really good dinner and were briefed on our mission.

It is one of those classic good versus evil struggles where most of the human populace does not know about the threat and does not care except that they DO NOT want the struggle going on. And if the good guys don't fight the bad guys the bad guys will ruin everything for everyone including the apathetic masses. And we got in to our aircraft that were shockingly like TIE-Fighters from star wars and just as agile. We met our foes (I have no idea who we were fighting? Aliens? Another race? Another country?) outside of the city, with a goal of keeping them from leveling it. There was a chaotic dog fight. They manned stealth bombers and flew in formation making them a solid wall. We flew at random but like a school of fish ever conscious of our proximity to the others so collisions were avoided. They had a distinct leader and plan. None of our pilots was designated leader; we moved as necessary and received suggestions from our base.

We were in control of the fight and they were being pushed back. Then they were running. And we realized that we were being drawn away from the city so that a few could sneak in behind us. I broke off from the chase with two others and met three enemies at the city limits. At first we were chasing them but somehow they looped back around and were chasing us. My ship started losing power and I managed to set it down in an alley by a park where some transient shops were set up. I snuch in to a pot shop and bought a AA battery from the dred-locked hippie who made the jewelry and other merchandise. $3.18 for one AA battery. I remember specifically. But none of the other prices stayed the same or made sense. Thats when I realized I was dreaming. I bought the battery and fired up my ship again. In that time my comrades had been trapped by the three ships and were hovering and spinning nearer and nearer to each other as the other ships closed in. Apparently I had been forgotten and I used that to my advantage. One ship was was sent skittering into a tall sky scrapper shearing off the top 10 floors as it went. Another spiralled down and out of the city into the mountains and the third took off after it with us in pursuit. And then I woke up.

And then it was over.

But TIE fighters run on one AA battery.

Coffee shops close too early

And so one sits at a coffee shop, because a coffee shop seems like a nice place to sit when one has to wait. And it is Peet’s which means it is better than other coffee shops automatically. And it is in Lexington which means that it must be better than a normal Peet’s because zoning prohibits par chain stores from taking up space. And one sips a chai tea that begs to be swum in and slept in and hugged. And since you cannot do these things it does them to you instead.

I have been told that purgatory is a place of waiting. I wonder if purgatory is like a coffee shop. People sitting and waiting and sipping and chatting. And the book club going on mindlessly about some blather that wasn’t worth one reading let alone the nine it received. And the half Goth flirting with the baristas while the obnoxiously toned woman orders skim foam. The classical music piped in overhead being overcome by a ringing phone, a grinder, steaming milk and an oven timer. The people walking by in the half drizzle glaring angrily at you because you are warmer and drier and sipping more chai and they have a place to be and you are just waiting. All of these would drive one mad if one was wont to be driven. But the music is peaceful and the book club monotone and ignorable, the half-Goth awkward and interesting and the passersby colorful. And this is a warm waiting steeped in chai tea. Waiting is far from paradise but there are worse waitings and worse than waitings.

My Christmas cravings are on the shelves here. Myriad warm beverages and the tools to make them. Thermoses with tea infuser baskets. French press travel mugs. Tea pots. Infusers. Mugs. Coffees. Teas. Cocoas. In the moment, holding this chai tea, I cannot imagine anything else I could want for Christmas (except the ever present puppy in my mind). What else could one want for Christmas? Maybe wool hats, wool socks or another alpaca.

AH HA! The half-Goth WORKS here. That explains why he looks so familiar. That and he looks and awful lot like Wayne when you ignore the Goth half. And Makayla the barista not flirted with is now on break working on her novel…or maybe her geography homework. Maybe I should be too.

Desperation Meal

1/2 Package of whole wheat spaghetti
1/5 a package of frozen cream cheese (more or less)
2 cubes frozen basil
4T left over pizza sauce that may or may not belong to you
2 splooshes of milk
a little olive oil
1 can salmon that has an unfortunately strong flavor

Make the spaghetti however. While it is draining in the sink use the already heated pan to try to melt the cream cheese and basil. Add in the pizza sauce when you discover the cream cheese starting to burn. Add in the milk and olive oil when you discover the pizza sauce starting to burn. Mix in the salmon at some point. You end up with this pinkish reddish paste eventually. Mix the spaghetti in with the paste and you have a desperation meal. Actually 2 or 3 of them.

Rating: Borderline tasty. Definitely ok. The salmon flavor is tamed by the other flavors and ends up more like tuna. (MUCH better than trying it with mac n cheese). Mom would still probably gag.

-Jn

(If I had a gun I would shoot all the gulls because they will NOT SHUT UP. AGH!)

Tell me a story

I have been writing a lot lately but not for you. At least not for you yet.

In my selfishness I want you to write ME a story.

Yesterday after lunch I was wandering around behind the dorm building setting waders out to dry when I heard a snatch of Jazz music come over the bluff in a wind gust. I figured one of the sailboats had a radio up way too high but then I heard it again. When I climbed up to the balcony porch I could see a guy standing at the waters edge in shorts and a white tee shirt playing Jazz music from a saxophone. He never finished a song, though the little blurts and burst of music were good music. There were other people on the beach further down but no one was paying attention to him. I also don't know how he got there, from some other private access or from the public way about a half mile down the beach but not from our stairs.

I want to know why he was there and all of the other details about him. I have my own version that I am quite fond of and I will share it when I get around to polishing it and making a few lies longer.

(The picture is of where he was standing but at HIGH high tide. He was there at low tide, imagine lots of big rocks and tide pools...less water :P )

-Jn

A cormorant's green glass door

Yesterday morning when I awakened the world seemed to end at the bottom of the bluff. Everything had been white washed in a thick fog and the wavelets seemed frozen on the water. There was no definition to any landmark and no horizon line to give the eye perspective. The only visible features in this expanse of nothing were two pointed rocks, holding their heads above the high tide line. They were parallel to each other and slightly skewed from the bluff. Perched atop each rock was a single cormorant, gazing out at the world’s end. It seemed as though they were sentinels entrusted with guarding the passageway to another time or place. If the mighty, bold, or stupid could bring a raft thus far one bird would warn and the other encourage, and both would watch the soul slip through the gateway into danger.

You would have been able to feel the magic in the air. It was breathtaking. Then you would move to quickly to get a better view and get caught up on the air because it didn’t deign to move with you. That’s when you would realize that the world was cloaked not in a cool morning fog or misty after rain but the hanging, deadening cover of humidity that was impenetrable by the sun and impervious to the breeze. This is how magic dies.

I am told that yesterday it got up to 95 F in my area which those who keep track call a record high for the day. And while the previous day was warmer, ringing in at 99 F on my car thermometer, I was no longer in waders and the heat was less morally and mentally deadening. I suppose I should offer some space for the heat turning people stupid, but yesterday four people caught me in casual conversation and asked the same question. “Is it hot enough for you Jenn?” It took everything in my heat stroke damaged mind not to say, “No actually, I don’t start to enjoy myself until it is over 100 degrees and at least 95 F the shade.” This is rude and I did not say it. I told Meghan instead.


-Jn

Different Place, Different Weather

The air is still on this side street as it is throughout this history laden town. The dishwasher is keeping time with the traffic, and I cannot hear the sound of my own typing for the sake of it. The steady background hum is occasionally overlaid with a hurried siren or the bwap of a motorcycle speeding up, but the dishwasher chinks dishes in reply.

I have most recently been mixing, mashing and chopping, making a green paste for my supper. Now I am composing for my benefit and consuming the thick salsa for the same reason.

Try this:
4 zabocayo (or avocados or paltas for those otherwise traveled) mashed
1 tomato chopped
¼ a large red onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic pressed or minced
Heaps of chopped fresh cilantro
The juice from at least half of a lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Chop, mash, season and stir together. Serve with anything that will scoop including crackers and spoons. It doesn’t keep well so either eat it all or pack it up in the following way. Find the smallest container that will hold all leftovers. Flatten the surface of the mole and cover it with lime juice. Press plastic wrap tight onto the surface and otherwise cover the container. Do not use metal.

Less recently I was painting a living room in the same heat conditions. Earlier in the day you could more clearly see through the hang of humidity; however, sweat chose to flow instead of kindly evaporating. Curiously enough the paint was still drying almost as fast as it was applied. We managed to even out the streaky spots, cover the cracks, and blend all of the dirty shades of Previous Tenant Quick Cover Up into a uniform presentation of Arcadia White. The calming effects of solid color walls are amazing. Before the paint went up I did not realize how stressful and distracting the ugly patches of poorly painted wall mixed with dust bunny dirt were to my eyes. Now if only we could buy the paint for the kitchen to cover up the Smurf-threw-up-on-the-wall paint color testing patches. And maybe procure and air conditioner. That would be good too.

-Jn

Promised rain never came...

It is a few past eleven and a storm is rolling in. The winds are building in the tree tops and along the water. Down the bluff there are whitecaps seen by faint glints of light coming from neighboring houses. There is no moon nor are there stars. Unless the tide is out all of the way, water must be crashing against the rocks below, but it can’t be seen.

The storm is coming in fast. Fifteen minutes ago I walked from the other building and it was calm. I was temped to stay longer in the garden to look at the night blooming flowers, but there was an eerie feel to the air. It was not so much a chill in my spine as an overwhelming desire to be back inside. Perhaps the same unsettled energy is what hushed the frogs and halted the chirring of the insects. Or maybe what I felt was heard silence driving me indoors. Regardless, by the time I gathered my laundry and made my way upstairs the wind had begun. Now the sound of it against the cliff face and thrashing through the trees is drowning out the hollow iterations of the fog horn.

Scattered in patches of brush and trees between the well hewn banding trails mother cardinals and other nesters will be huddled against the coming rain. A night like this may promise respite from the dangers of sharp-eyed night fliers. And the rain will compliment the cranberry bogs and their swampy surrounds for the frogs. More water lends time for breeding and frantic tadpole growth. It will also pool in depressions too small for much else but healthy crops of mosquitoes. And while the adults feed on banders and other woods wanderers, they will soon become food for the swift birds, and any young that hatch in deeper water will supplement the diet of tadpoles.

But the rain is not as committed to this night as the wind. No thunder cracks through the trees or against the bluff as yet and no lightning has chosen to highlight the cloud edges. There is still time for the drops above to reconsider falling here before the wind blows itself into stillness. They may merely be waiting for a moment of peace and a vertical fall instead of a complicated, muddling sky dance. Or they may decide this watershed has not issued the proper calling and follow the wind further until they find a suitable resting place. Storms are fond of our befores and linger at our afters but they rarely pause here above us for long if at all. Who can know the mind of the rain? And who can map the lightning’s course?

5/30/08 Manomet



...The winds blew all the same.
-Jn

Sip it

Some days are just made for nestling in a comfy chair with an oversized mug of tea and reading. Near enough to the windows that you can see the drizzly grey sky and the misty after-rain and watch the droplets race down the panes. Some days require driving to other peoples’ backyards in a van with a broken everything and a distinct potpourri of mixed molds. Then hiking through wet scrub to get to reach extra large puddles that may or may not be filled with special creatures and standing in cold water until you forget what feet feel like. The van was wet, the papers were wet, the range finder was wet, the people were wet, the waders were wet and the pools were dry-almost. I still don’t want an office job thanks.

My partner at arms is headed back to the frozen North on Sunday and today was my first day without training wheels. It also appears that my fearless leader has been incapacitated for maybe a week and unknown quantity = intern Matt comes on Monday afternoon. But I got a birthday pie, a grad school acceptance email, a perfect little spitfire birthday present, a jar full of tadpoles and planarians, left over Thai food for breakfast and a 14 year old kid who wants to volunteer with us. After we bailed when the rain started again I spent some time pretending to band birds (which I will do more of on Monday while waiting for intern Matt). Tomorrow should look like whales and sweet, sweet laziness.

That time of year

My friends here follow bird calls- they are mostly banders by trade. They seem to know every which mating noise and from whence and who it came. And yes you wonder how such a small beastie could make such a big racket. But birds are flying machines and they are made to hold a lot of air- maybe it isn't so crazy that they could cause a ruckus.

But I follow a different set of romance songs. First and always it is the peepers. Then the wood frogs, then the green. Now the tree frogs and the American toads. Peepers are the smallest frogs around but they consistently make the biggest noise. Unfortunately they all sound the same on the surface except for the occasional excited trill. Wood frogs sound more like ducks and while tree frogs sound happy their burbles don't exactly inspire. My favorite songs emanate from the toads. Long echoing trills stretching in to minutes and all toads at a different pitch and timing harmonizing with each other. But I guess this makes sense too. Honestly if you want to get some action, you need to sound fantastic if you look like a Bufo.

"I have always liked frogs. I liked them since before becoming a zoologist, and nothing I have had to learn about them since has marred the attachment. I like "looks" of frogs and their outlook. And especially the way they get together in wet places on warm nights and sing about sex." -- Dr. Archie Carr

Jn has a Job and 2/3 of a place to live

This post is for the uninformed which is most of my friends because I suck and the last week was also crazy busy. So was the week before that.

Two Wednesdays ago I had a phone interview about a job I had already kissed goodbye because it was supposed to have already been a week underway. Thursday I got coffee and then my motorcycle permit with JJ (I completely forget now why he is JJ in shorthand but I remember that he is). Later that day I got a call while buying high quality produce at Wilson Farms after visiting with the super pregnant, buck-toothed llama and the 2 super pregnant goats who like to bite chickens because I was locked out of my boyfriends house on the day before corned beef and cabbage day which I guess makes it the 27th and this a run on sentence. Regardless, they wanted me and I wanted that job more than any other job I have applied to during my lengthy term of unemployment. As I mentioned they intended to start work before they interviewed me which means they wanted me a week ago then...or about 2.5 weeks ago now which will be this Wednesday. We start from behind and race against time.

One Wednesday ago the Red Queen drove up from her castle in PA to help me pack (and go to a hockey game, a book store, an ice cream stand, and a reptile show-things that NEEDED to happen in order to pack properly I swear). We (NP included) shuffled most of my belongings in to a 5x10 storage room since I now have furniture and can't keep everything I own only in my car. However, it says in big letters on the wall in the office that you cannot sleep or cook or really have any fun at all in the storage space so this does not count as a place to live. The stuff I will actually need or desperately want to have with me is in Catsby who is reluctantly about 1/3 of a place to live. I will sleep in a dorm for the summer with 3 other people hence the other 1/3 of a place. We finished mopping the floor and cleaning out the fridge this morning and RQ and Gurgles were on the road this morning at 8am.

The Job:
I am working for the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and I am doing this. If choose not to follow the link here is a summary. I will drive around to vernal pools on privately held lands in the Taunton and Charles River watersheds and them for presence/absence of animal species, test salinities, and take water samples that will be tested for fertilizers, pesticides, and road chemicals at another lab. The goal is to hit roughly 100 pools twice between now and when the pools dry up around mid June. Then I will hopefully get to help crunch numbers for data analysis. You should still chase the link because it has cool pictures and a video describing the project. They run out of funding to pay me in mid July sometime, at which point I move back to the north shore or someplace else and reacquire my belongings and a black and white cat.

-Jn

Variations on a Mango- Updated Recipe

2 Large Ripe Mangos, cut in to pieces
2-3 Peaches, cut in to pieces (Optional)
Peach schnapps
Trader Joe's Multigrain Biscuit mix
Oil
Farm Fresh Whole milk
Cinnamon
Vanilla Ice Cream

Cut up the fruit and put it in a bowl. Soak liberally with schnapps and let the fruit bits get thoroughly inebriated. Make the biscuits according to the package (Oil, Milk, donno what else or in what proportions sorry) and add about a half of a cup of sugar (I didn't add the sugar I wish I had). Sprinkle with cinnamon and a little sugar before baking. After the fruit has floated for a few hours dish it in to bowls over ice cream with a warm, wonderful biscuit. If you make enough you can have the same thing tomorrow night too. Bonus!